Month: January 2025

every inch

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Some days, it feels like a war of attrition (and we’re not talking about the cold now).

It’s just a fight, a relentless fight, one moment after the next, bloodied, beaten, without rest, without help, without anything to get us through but pure fucking grit and the sense that goddamnit, we’re gonna get there if we die trying.

This notion that life should be a dream, a dance through the tulips, it’s poison. It’s ephemeral opiate, a smoky high that keeps us from seeing what’s going on.

But the fight keeps us focused, no matter how many cuts and bruises, how many broken bones, no matter that our hearts are in tatters and we know we’ve gone far, far from the ideal person we intended to be at the start.

All that matters is the result.

And ain’t that a hell of a way to live?

Target: 1000 words
Written: 484 words, comic: Western Cradle #3

Read: Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Comics: Preacher 37-40
Music: I Can't Be Satisfied, Paul Rodgers & Brian Setzer

sitcoms

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Good lord. Watching Reba’s new show and all I can think is (and I never watched her old show, but the bits I’ve seen seem about the same)…

How fucking stupid do they think people are?

And what happened to all the good writers out there? So many are supposedly struggling, where the fuck were they when this shit was made?

Good Christ, fuck.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 836 words, comic: Western Cradle #3

Read: Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Comics: Preacher 34-36, Preacher: One Man's War 1
Music: NYPD Blue Soundtrack, Various (I mean, how the fuck did this happen?  And why is everything awful today?)

fighting back

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Well, mostly. I’m holding my own, but also partially drowning in phlegm and mucus.

This may be the birth of the Anti-Cold.

It’s like the Anti-Monitor, but against all things cough and snot related.

Snot robbed my mother, and I must avenge her! Mucus kicked my dog! Phlegm killed my Uncle Ben!

Can cough medicine make one delirious? Asking for a friend.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 2217 words, comic: Western Cradle #3

Read: Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Comics: Preacher 31-33, Preacher: Cassidy - Blood & Whiskey 1
Music: NWA Greatest Hits, NWA (fuck 'em, right?)

nope

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Coughing should not involve chewing.

Yeah, we’re going full manbaby.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 320 words, comic: Western Cradle #3

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X/Alex Haley
Comics: Preacher 28-30, Preacher: The Good Old Boys 1
Music: Nurse, Sonic Youth

something inside me

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This cold is something else.

It’s got my blood pressure up so high I can feel it. It’s a terrifying prospect to know that something as simple blowing your nose could cause an embolism.

I’m coughing so hard that it’s giving me a chronic migraine and each cough comes with a growing terror that I might stroke out or have an aneurysm.

Fuck me.

I’m starting to think this might not be a cold.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 226 words, comic: Western Cradle 3

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Haley/X
Comics: Preacher 24-27
Music: Numbers, Cat Stevens/Yusuf

coughin’ so hard it hurts

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Literally. I’ve coughed so deep today that it just about gave me a migraine, or what I thought was the start of a migraine, but after checking my blood pressure, it might be a stroke or an aneurysm.

Fuck.

Can’t catch a break.

Fuckin’ cold.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 464 words, comic: Western Cradle #2

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, X/Haley
Comics: Preacher: The Story Of You-Know-Who (Arseface!) #1, Preacher 21-23
Music: Number One Blind, Veruca Salt

something that looks like escargot

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That’s what I’m coughing up now.

(Thanks, Phil Hartman)

Coughing non-stop; I’m hoping it’s the last gasps of this cold trying to cough itself out of my system; I fear it’s mutating into a chest infection.

Would that I had a doctor I could see; that our current health care situation is so fucked can only be the result of the typical Conservative “break everything, then use that as a sign everything is broken” policy of social services.

Assholes.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 746 words, comic: Western Cradle #2

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X
Comics: Preacher: Saint Of Killers 3-4, Preacher 19-20
Music: Nuggets, Iggy Pop (it makes me shudder to think how many older bands have songs about underage girls)

slept in

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Until EIGHT. In the AM!

Crazy, right?

I haven’t had more than about six or seven hours of sleep in months, without being ill.

Of course, I’m ill today, but fuck it. I am using this downtime to push forward hard on the things that I love – writing, reading, comics, with a side of meditation, exercise, cooking and music.

That’s pretty much the sum total, although I think travel, sex, video games, and various other sundry storytelling mediums also play a part.

What else could you possibly need? A greater purpose? People who love you? Righteous vengeance?

I don’t know, but I’m feeling better, anyway.

Still sick, but hell if I couldn’t use eight to ten hours every night.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 2575 words, comic: Western Cradle #2

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X/Alex Haley
Comics: Preacher: Saint Of Killers 1-2, Preacher 17-18
Music: Nowhere Generation I & II, Rise Against

cold

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Not physically.

The mucus kind.

It hasn’t been great. I’m trying not be a manbaby about it, but it’s hard. Grit and determination, man. No need to pull the wuss card yet.

Save it for when you’ve got a real disease.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 312 words, comic: Western Cradle #2

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Haley/X
Comics: Preacher 13-16
Music: Nowhere, Ride

the need for vengeance

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I understand the impulse, from a fiction standpoint. Who doesn’t love a good revenge story?

John Wick isn’t what it is for nothing. (They killed his dog, so he spent four movies murdering everyone that’s ever been even tangentially related to the guy who did it. As a dog owner, I’ve never been more invested.)

The problem is that revenge seldom works out the way we want. The fantasy that plays in our head of getting that asshole boss in trouble with HR or having the perfect takedown of that bitchy girl in your friend group, more often than not, what happens is… nothing.

HR doesn’t care, because that asshole boss is so far up his asshole boss’ ass that HR finds him untouchable. That bitchy girl, she’s been insulting people so long, she rebuts with a brutal takedown of her own, and it has truth in it, and you’re cut to the quick. Your friends all titter, because they, too, are assholes.

Congratulations, you’ve just made your life worse.

All I’m saying is that as nice as the fantasy is, unless you’re some superheroic powered individual like John Wick, it probably won’t work out for you. Better to cut those influences without words, and move toward your happy, rather than your revenge.

Of course, some of us can’t, and that seething anger becomes all consuming, until we’re delusional about the whole damn thing.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 360 words, comic: Western Cradle #2

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X (and Alex Haley, I guess)
Comics: Preacher 9-12
Music: Now For Plan A, Tragically Hip (the title track is so good)